Democratic Mayor of Youngstown, Ohio: Working Class Still Backs Trump

The mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, is no supporter of Donald Trump, but he told CNN Tuesday that many working-class people in the Democratic stronghold are still firmly behind the president.

Trump will hold a campaign-style rally in the city Tuesday night. Some 20,000 people have registered to attend at a venue that holds only 7,000.

The city’s mayor, John McNally, said he expects a “pretty raucous crowd” of Trump supporters.

[lz_jwplayer video=RXSPeQuE]

“I don’t think the president’s popularity has been diminished over the past six months, not only here in Mahoning County, in Youngstown, but also in Trumbull County to the north,” he told anchors Poppy Harlow and John Berman. “Pretty much, you know, the folks who voted for him, the folks who switched over, have held their support for the president.”

As much as anywhere, the Mahoning Valley demonstrates Trump’s surprising breakthrough with white working-class voters in the 2016 election. He became the first Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide to win Trumbull County and came within less than 4 percentage points of winning Mahoning, which also last went Republican in 1972.

McNally faulted Trump for failing to deliver on jobs in hard-hit areas like Youngstown, along with the president’s “tweet storm.” But he said voters “really appreciate the president’s no-holds-barred mentality towards those who he thinks oppose him.”

He said Trump reminds him of the region’s former U.S. representative, the outspoken and colorful Jim Traficant, who served more than two decades. He often ended speeches by saying, “Beam me up.”

McNally said he hopes the president talks about jobs, a bipartisan solution to health care, and infrastructure. One thing northeastern Ohio voters are not interested in, he said, is Russia.

“I pretty much think that’s what I’m saying,” he said. “I think some of that stuff gets up into the stratosphere of political thought, of Washington, D.C., that folks here in Youngstown on a daily basis really aren’t focused in on.”

[lz_related_box id=”823352″]

McNally said Russian interference in the 2016 election is an important issue, as is potential wrongdoing by anyone who worked on Trump’s campaign. But he said Democrats cannot rely on it for electoral success.

“It will be tough to run and win on that particular issue,” he said. “I think it’s important to focus on that issue. I still think there are lots of questions that are out there on that particular issue. It seems like every day, something new pops up. But in terms of 2018 or even — God forbid, we’re already talking about 2020 and the next presidential election — focusing entirely on Russia I’m not sure will be enough for the Democratic Party to be successful.”

(photo credit, homepage image: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia; photo credit, article image: Michael Candelori, Flickr)